Holy underwear Batman!

Several years ago I went to visit my friend Jenny in Sweden. Through a long series of misconnected flights, my luggage disappeared into the abyss somewhere. (The abyss is also known as Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris - where luggage is often sucked into a black hole for eternity.)

Having been flying for 18+ hours and arriving with only the clothes on my back, I would soon be producing odors more suitable for - well, Paris. I was already feeling a bit uncomfortably sticky as it was. Since my luggage was not likely to show up that day, or even the day after, we chose to go to H&M to buy a few articles of clothing to get me through the next few days.

I bought a pair of jeans, a couple of t-shirts, and another set of my beloved "days of the week" socks.



I also bought a few sets of boxer-briefs.

After I got to the house and showered, I put on the boxer-briefs and was pleasantly surprised to find they fit perfectly. There was no excess material anywhere, yet they weren't fitting too tightly. This has been the opposite of my experience with US-market boxer briefs. I don't know why the US-market briefs don't fit well, but frankly they suck. The Hanes and Fruit-of-the-Loom briefs feel more like boxers with a bit of elasticity. Old Navy's boxer-briefs are particularly bad - I believe they were made for kangaroos with a pouch in the front and no genitals below.

Anyway, I later returned home with my new perfectly-fitting boxer-briefs and they joined the underwear rotation. But I always was sure to wear them for special "dressy" occasions like the symphony or funerals. You never know when you're going to get lucky at a funeral and want your best underwear on display for potential mourners.

While doing laundry today I noticed my very favorite pair of the set, a bold dark blue number, has developed a number of holes in the crotch area. They're not huge holes yet, but they will be in a a short matter of time.

It's times like this that I'm glad I'm single.

We all know that girls will make you throw away your favorite pair of underwear as soon as there are holes in it. Despite the imperfections, I am in no way ready to throw away this particular pair of briefs. In fact, I think I'm going to step away from dating for the next year or two, just so I don't end up in a relationship which may see my favorite banana hammock relegated to the trash bin.

*snicker*

Today was a busy day at work, and I didn't end up having time to grab any lunch.

Then I have my radio show at 6:00, which didn't leave me any time to grab some dinner either. Hence I have not really eaten today.

There is a small market by the radio station studio. I popped in there and grabbed the best dinner I could: a jar of Pringles and a king size Snickers.

I got into the studio and set up shop and queued up a long song so I would have time to devour my meal.



As I pulled the Snickers bar out of my backpack, I felt something was amiss. It felt like it was broken in two. OK, fine maybe I set it down a bit rough. Famished, I opened it and plopped this down:



What the hell is this crap?!?! There is nothing "KING SIZE" about two Halloween-sized candy bars! A King Size Snickers is supposed to look like a massive majestic lump of milk chocolate-covered orgasm, not two turd nuggets!

Reading the label carefully, you see that they now advertise it as a "2 Piece" (written in smaller letters, of course) King Size. More importantly, though, is the weight, which has decreased to a meager 3.29 ounces of carbohydrate-loaded goodness. This is a decrease of over 11% from the original King Size Snickers of 3.7 ounces! Who to blame for this? Apparently the Food and Drink Federation in the UK, in an effort to make consumers more health conscious. Of course, the price remained the same for the reduced-sized bar. How convenient!

In short, Snickers is now off the top of my list of preferred meals on the go. I haven't decided who will be promoted into this new position, but it's likely to be a runoff between Twix, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Pringles. Farewell, my old friend Snickers.

100mm f/2.8 macro

I logged in to my Fidelity account the other day and was surprised to find that my stock options were actually worth some money! Since they expired in just a few months, I quickly cashed them out and (invested them in stable but high yielding mutual funds) (donated the proceeds to a charitable cause) pissed the money away on stuff that will support the Chinese economy.

I've wanted the 100mm f/2.8 macro lens for a while because I love taking pictures of bugs, and you need a good macro lens for pictures of bugs. Sadly I did not think of the fact that I'm ordering the lens in the middle of December when no bugs are out for the shooting.







I'll probably be uploading a bunch of photos over the next several days and weeks as I play with this. You'll be able to find them here.

Life, (Liberty?), and the Pursuit of Happiness

This post will make you wonder if I'm a tinfoil hat loon. I assure you I am not. Tinfoil doesn't have adequate reflection at the frequency the government is broadcasting subliminal messages into our brains.

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In St. Louis a few months ago, we were driving home from a night of exploring the town, when we came upon a DUI checkpoint. The entire freeway was diverted down to two lanes, and officers would check out each driver - making sure their license and registration was in order, and doing a quick visual/sniff test to see if the driver had been drinking.

The person in front of us did not do so well. The officer appears to talk to him for about 20-30 seconds. The driver stepped out of the car, was patted down quickly, put into plastic handcuffs and led away. Another officer stepped into the car and drove it off to a waiting line of vehicles to be towed. Tow trucks were running back and forth, towing two cars at a time and still unable to keep up with the mass that were waiting. The entire process took maybe one minute, and seemed very efficient. TOO efficient.

I am all for removing drunk drivers off the road, and think in general the US' DUI laws are too lenient. However, DUI checkpoints aren't really targeting the offenders. Instead, it's law enforcement throwing out a net and seeing what they catch, while making law-abiding citizens go through a mandatory stop and questioning without any reasonable suspicion.

Stopped without reasonable suspicion? Isn't that against the Fourth Amendment? Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist doesn't think so, and the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of legalizing them. Rehnquist's majority opinion held that the end justifies the means, the clear and explicit words of the Fourth Amendment, that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, are swept aside because the ends justify obviating the Constitution. Can you image if the Supreme Court decided that guns posed such a danger that, well, despite the second amendment, guns needed to be outlawed?

Even worse, some of these "sobriety" checkpoints have become about revenue generation in addition to searching for DUI offenders. In Connecticut, cars with expired registrations are impounded immediately, which has left more than one parent with kids-in-tow stranded and searching for a way to get to their destination. Seatbelt and other safety tickets are handed out like candy.

Unfortunately our rights are slowly being stripped of us, and nobody seems to care. The ugly Patriot Act that was rushed through Congress with little opposition in the days after 9/11. In the following years, large portions of it were found unconstitutional, but unfortunately after innocent people were locked up because of it.

All of these things instill intimidation and fear in the population, which seems to be exactly what the government desires. I hope that some of us become aware of these slow but noticeable intrusions into our lives before we become a police state like the UK is rapidly becoming. Sadly though, I suspect we'll continue our decline.

I encourage all of you to remember your rights when stopped for any reason. One of the great things about this country is you don't have to answer any question the police ask you. If you are stopped, you can hand the officer your license and registration and sit silently while he peppers you with questions. You don't have to answer anything, no matter how harmless the question seems, and you can't be detained for not wanting to chit-chat with an officer. Specifically ask if you are being detained or if you are free to go, otherwise you are willingly sitting in the custody of the police. This video (for an immigration checkpoint) demonstrates your rights in action perfectly. If you have the time and confidence to do so, I encourage you to exercise these rights.

St. Louis - Day 3

Day three was a bit rainy and cool, but still filled with fun!

We started off with a visit to the St. Louis Art Museum. The museum features a wide-variety of art from all time periods (including some big names like Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, etc), plus some other interesting items such as antique swords and guns.





There is also an interesting selection of items from some of the south Pacific islands. You know you are viewing something serious when they have descriptions like this:

"The men of this region kept a number of wooden figures in their sacred men's houses that they would use to call upon their ancestors for help in hunting animals or revenge killings. To entice an ancestral spirit to enter a figure, they would smear it with animal feces, pieces of human meat, and blood taken from a man's penis."

What a fun-loving bunch of people these guys must be! I can't wait to have my ancestor's spirit possess a doll by merely poking at my dong with a knife!

After checking out the art museum we hit up Pappy's Smokehouse for the best barbecue I've had in my life. I can't decide if the ribs or the brisket was my favorite, so get both.

Our bellies full of meaty goodness, we wandered back west to check out the Cathedral Basilica. It was pretty over-the-top like these cathedrals tend to be. I wish I could have jammed on the pipe organ.









The trip concluded with seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform downtown. I'm not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, but it was still a great show, with Bruce bringing people on stage to dance, a little kid to sing, taking audience requests, etc. I'm glad I caught it!

The rest of the photos can be found here.

St. Louis - Day 2

We started off Day 2 in St. Louis by driving into Illinois to see the Cahokia Mounds, which are some piles of dirt that were made about a millennium ago. The natives back then had an abundant crop of Caterpillar tractors and bulldozers and since the market for them was nil (diesel gas had not been invented yet), they decided to build random piles of dirt with them.

I took a few photos of the area, but it's really hard to take interesting photos of piles of dirt, so I passed on posting them. However, I did see this little guy cruising around:



Oh, here's a photo from the top of the tallest (100 ft) mound, with St. Louis in the background.



The evening was spent at the City Museum. I cannot put into words how amazing this place is, although the Wikipedia article on it may be useful. Basically, imagine an abandoned warehouse that an eccentric guy started stashing crap in. Pipe organs, skateboard ramps, vintage pinball machines, you name it. Then paint everything bizarre colors. Install some slides that go down several floors. That just gets the tip of the iceberg of the City Museum. If you ever go to St. Louis, it is a MUST see. I cannot emphasize this enough! I mean, they have a ball pit for ADULTS for hell's sake!









The rest of the photos can be found here.

How Pathetique

Last night I caught a Utah Symphony performance of the Tchaikovsky Sixth Symphony, known as the "Pathetique".

The symphony is one of his most popular and is performed quite regularly - probably every 2-3 years at the minimum. One would think I would have seen it several times by now. However, this was actually the first time I've seen it live. There is an odd story behind this though.

I've had other opportunities to see it in the past, but for some reason, I have always had an odd nagging feeling that I would die shortly after hearing it live. Where this came from I have no clue - I don't remember dreaming of it, and I don't know of anybody who has died after hearing it, and I'm not superstitious in any way. But still, it was an odd nagging feeling.

Yesterday I sucked it up and caught it. And you know what? The drive home was uneventful. Midnight passed without incident. And I'm sitting here typing now.

I guess Tchaikovsky is safe after all.